Cooking Whole Maine Lobster and Extracting the Cooked Meat

This technique turns a live whole Maine lobster into cooked meat you can serve or use in another dish. You boil the lobster for a time based on its own weight and confirm doneness with a thermometer and the look of the flesh. Then you open the claws, knuckles and tail to remove the meat in usable pieces. Use it when you want lobster served in the shell at the table, or when you need picked meat to measure into a recipe.

Equipment

• A roomy pot that holds enough water to cover the lobsters without boiling over
• Tongs for lowering lobsters in and lifting them out
• An instant-read thermometer for checking tail and claw meat
• A sturdy cutting board for cracking shells
• A small knife for scoring the tail meat
• Shallow containers for cooling and refrigerating leftover meat
• A kitchen scale if you plan to divide the picked meat among dishes

Step 1: Boil the lobsters by individual weight

The supplier Maine Lobster Now recommends this boiling method. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, with enough water to fully cover the lobsters. Leave room so the pot won't overflow when they go in. Lower each lobster into the water with tongs. Start your timer when the water returns to a boil, not when the lobsters go in.

Base the time on the weight of each lobster. Do not multiply the time by the number of lobsters in the pot. Four 1½-pound lobsters use the 1½-pound time, not four times that.

Weight per lobster	Estimated boiling time after the boil resumes
1 pound	8–10 minutes
1½ pounds	10–12 minutes
2 pounds	14–16 minutes
3 pounds	18–22 minutes

If your lobsters are different sizes, track each one against its own time. A 1-pound and a 2-pound lobster in the same pot will not finish together.

Steaming is the alternative. The same supplier sets lobsters on a rack above about two inches of water. Steaming uses a separate timing chart that is not covered here, so do not apply the boiling times above to steamed lobster.

Step 2: Confirm doneness before removing them

A red shell alone does not show that the lobster is cooked through. Check the thickest meat in both the tail and a claw, since one can lag behind the other. Insert the thermometer into the meat itself, not against the shell.

• Temperature: Maine Lobster Now specifies 145°F. Washington State's health department gives a shellfish endpoint of at least 145°F internal for 15 seconds.
• Appearance: the flesh should be pearly and opaque, not translucent.
• Check both locations: if the tail reads done but the claw does not, keep cooking and recheck.

Overcooking is a common worry. Its specific effects on lobster texture aren't covered here. The practical safeguard is to start checking at the low end of the time range and lift the lobster out promptly once both tail and claw reach 145°F with opaque flesh.

Remove done lobsters from the water right away and let them cool until you can handle them comfortably.

Step 3: Open the claws and knuckles

The steps below follow Julian Klenda's demonstration on cooked hard-shell lobster.

• 1. Twist off each claw assembly where it joins the body.
• 2. Separate the knuckles from the claw.
• 3. Remove the small movable pincer, then pull out the thin cartilage attached to it.
• 4. Lightly crack the broad part of the claw on the cutting board and pick out the meat. Aim for a crack that opens the shell without crushing it into the meat.
• 5. Lightly crack the knuckles on the board the same way and pick out their meat.

Step 4: Open the tail after cooking

• 1. Hold the body in one hand and the tail in the other, then bend the tail away from the body to separate them.
• 2. Gently crack the tail shell and peel it away from the meat.
• 3. Shallowly score along the top of the tail meat to expose the intestinal tract, and remove it.

Step 5: Check the meat and handle the tomalley

Look over all the picked meat for shell fragments before serving or adding it to a dish.

The tomalley is the green digestive tissue found near the head. University of Maine Cooperative Extension reports Maine advice not to eat it, because pollutants can build up in that tissue. Leave it out of the meat you serve.

A note on parboiling

Some cooks parboil lobster to make the shell easier to remove. Parboiling is only partial cooking. Lobster handled this way is not ready to serve as cooked meat. It needs to be fully cooked to the doneness checks in Step 2 before it is eaten.

Planning service and portions

No reliable conversion from live weight to picked meat is given here, so don't plan portions on an assumed yield. Weigh the meat after picking and divide it from that number.

For a cook with several lobsters, a simple service log helps. Record each lobster's weight, cooking method, when its timer started, and its separate tail and claw checks. Note who is opening the shells and whether each lobster will be served whole in the shell or as picked meat.

Hypothetical example: your picked meat weighs 12 ounces and the dish you are making calls for 8 ounces. You would use 8 ounces and have 4 ounces left for another use or for storage.

Cooling, storing and reheating

• Cool leftover cooked lobster meat in shallow containers.
• Refrigerate within two hours of cooking, or within one hour if the surrounding temperature is above 90°F.
• When reheating leftovers, bring them to 165°F, as USDA advises for cooked leftovers.